Compensation
by Lady of Termina
Summary: "Tavros," she said again, frowning at him. "I said, 'why are you helping me'"


Disclaimer: I do not own _Homestuck._

* * *

"Tavros?"

"Yeah?"

"Why are you helping me?"

Tavros regarded the troll girl warily. Talking to Vriska was like walking through a minefield—she was easily upset by some of the most outrageous things, draining the young troll of most of his patience, which was pretty much endless.

"Tavros," she said again, frowning at him. "I said, 'why are you helping me?'"

"Because…"

_The last time he had seen Vriska things hadn't gone so well (okay, that was a bit of an understatement. She had pushed him off a cliff and paralyzed him forever without so much as a backwards glance), but now he was in her room and she was actually _smiling_ down at him. It wasn't the usual smirk he was accustomed to, or the sneer she used when talking to everybody except for Terezi when they were FLARPing. Her mouth was stretched in a painfully wide grin, showing off rows of white, pointy teeth, but it was genuine. He stared up at her, his longtime tormentor and sort of-friend, in a daze._

_She nudged him with the toe of her shoe a couple times before giving a loud, exasperated sigh and producing a small pouch from seemingly out of nowhere. Muttering under her breath, she dropped a handful of blue sparkle dust into his face, his eyes automatically blinking furiously as he continued to lie supine on the floor. He couldn't get up. What did she expect?_

_Sighing theatrically once more, the girl swore and lifted him bodily off the floor, holding him at arm's length away from her body. For the first time he noticed the dress she had on, a wispy white one that flattered her body in every way possible, hugging her curves and being just low-cut enough to be considered appropriate while still giving him a nice, full look of what she had going on up top, coming to a rest at her knees. She scrutinized him, her cobalt blue lips twisting together and her black eyebrows furrowing._

_Tavros couldn't quite read the look in her eyes—a mixture of mischievousness and hesitation and _

What is she doing

She's holding me way too close to her

_All he could remember about the experience was that her breath radiating across his face was warm and stuttering nervously as she slammed his face to hers, and his cheeks heated up in an unbearable way as her lips met us. Her blue lipstick was sticky, leaving traces of it on his own lips, and she was as awkward as he was—he could feel her hands shaking against the collar of his green tunic—but she seemed to have a vague idea of what to do and held him tenderly to her slender body, his arms uselessly flailing at his sides as her lips lingered against his._

_When she finally pulled away, it was with a look of mingled disgust, hatred, and—could he be right? The briefest flicker of hurt crossed her face before being replaced with rage, her teeth clenching together audibly as she threw him unceremoniously to the floor, the sound of the impact resonating throughout the room. For a fraction of a second his will was taken away from him as she tried to make him want her, to love her, but then…_

_She stopped._

_As she turned on her heel, shoulders slumped, the only thing Tavros could think of was how soft her lips were but how hard her personality was and how _that was my very first kiss_ and he didn't even try to console her, to make her feel better about why he wouldn't kiss her back._

_He just lay prone on the floor, feeling very conflicted and scared and useless._

"I… I want to get to know you better. I, uh," he fell into stuttering when she looked up at him. Her eyes were blank, but the same look she had worn before she kissed him was back, and he was once again a troll of 6 sweeps, entering a strange game and meeting the girl who love-hated him. "I just, we didn't really part on good terms? And I think we could, uh, be good friends, Vriska. Excellent friends," he finished lamely, looking back down at his feet.

Vriska made a soft humph noise and settled back against the sand. The heat of the desert day had worn off hours ago, a frigid night setting in, but neither took any notice of the drastic temperature drop. The stars in the sky twinkled and he watched them, fascinated. He hadn't spent much time outside when it was this time of day, too busy trying to finish his side quests, but he appreciated the beauty of the sky. Nights on Alternia were always the same—the inky black sky only had two points of light in it; the green moon and the purple moon of their planet. Taking his eyes off the constellations for a minute, Tavros watched her out of the corner of his eyes, scratching the side of his head. When he realized she wasn't going to say anything more, he leaned back, closing his eyes.

"Why would you want to get to know me?"

He wasn't sure if he had heard her correctly, her voice was pitched so low. Nevertheless, he cracked open his eyes and looked at her, really looked at her. Most of the time he had avoided her, both with his eyes and his body. _Especially _after that fiasco involving her quest cocoon. That was when all their problems had escalated to a point of violence that he could no longer take, and he had opted to run away from her every chance he'd gotten.

She arched one brow at him, and he felt the familiar fear set in, along with a light blush across his cheeks. "It's, um, like I said. We could be good friends, Vriska, if we weren't so mean to each other," he said earnestly. Vriska snorted and rolled her eyes upwards, spreading her arms out to her sides in fury and disbelief.

"'_We?'_ If anybody's the bully here it's me, Tavros, so don't give me any of that shit. Why does everybody always assume I have no sense of accountability? Well, I do, and you better listen…" Tavros tuned her out until she grabbed him forcefully by his elbows, pinning his arms to his side and snapping his neck back. He looked straight into her eyes with pure, unadulterated terror etched across his face, and her grip slackened, but she held fast to him as he tried to wriggle away, kicking up clouds of sand in his effort.

"You listen here, Tavros Nitram," she breathed, her face inches from his. "I don't want to be coddled by anyone, least of all you! So stop feeding me that crap about how _your_ death was _your_ fault—"

"But—"

"Just stop, okay! You said you want to be friends, right?" The boy nodded furiously.

"Then just stop trying to take responsibility for my mistakes. Just stop."

She released him and turned her head away from him, arms crossed over her chest like a petulant child. Groaning, he sat up, this time keeping well away from her and not daring to make so much as a peep. Finally, though, he gave voice to a thought that had been nagging at him for awhile.

"Uh, Vriska?"

"Mmmmmmmm?"

"If, uh, you don't mind my asking, why did you, um, ask me to…" Tavros paused, trying to think of a more eloquent way to phrase her plan.

"Fuck shit up?" she suggested, looking up from her nails.

"Yeah."

She eyed him from underneath her tangled bangs before looking away.

_In all honesty, she hadn't expected him to really try to _hunt her down_. When she had actually given him a free pass to kill her he had run away like a little girl, tail between his paralyzed legs, leaving her there to bleed to death, slowly and excruciatingly painfully. She could still feel the blood seeping out of her, running thickly down her body and pooling onto her quest cocoon. Regaining her composure, she jeered at him, bringing her thumb down to the floor in a menacing gesture._

"_My, my, look who came to play! Finally grew a pair of balls, huh, Pupa?"_

_He glowered at her and she merely smirked. "You-you're going down, Vriska," he said, trying and failing to keep the stutter out of his voice. He held up a fist with one thumb poking out and drew it deliberately across his throat, gripping the lance he held in his hands all the more tightly. She grinned maniacally back at him and held up his long discarded pair of legs, making the same slashing motion at the tops of her own. His eyes popped out and he raised one fist at her, this time moving in to strike._

_As he approached her with the lance pointing directly at her chest, the only thing she could think of was how much of a waste it was—matesprit or kismesis, their affair would have been a tumultuous, yet altogether satisfying one. This thought made her smile falter and she slapped him, hard, across the face, her palm stinging as she ripped the lance out of his hands with her other arm, steadying him by the shoulder as she plunged the lance into his chest. The strong scent of his muddy orange blood filled the room as she shoved him into the abyss, failing to remember the last time she had done this, how he had fallen in the same exact way, his bloodcurdling scream piercing the night and the crack of his bones violating her ears. She waved at him with one hand on her hip; his eyes were wide open with shock, the same exact way as before._

_The smothering guilt came immediately afterwards._

"I was just tired of being alone in this shithole, was all."

* * *

**End Note: **So I'm kind of a big TavrosxVriska fan, and I love how they're going to try to break the game, so to speak. I also like the tiny bit of growing they've done—Tavros didn't even stutter (although I made him do it here because Vriska wasn't being particularly violent in that scene) and how he stood up for himself. I'd really like them together if they continued to grow. They're both kind of unfit for the other at this point.

Anyway, reviews are love!


End file.
